Chapter 3

It's one thing to glibly agree to a challenge a month ago in a bright sunlit office in the anonymous safety of the city but now, pulling into Oxenholme station, which looks just like something from The Railway Children, I'm having second, third, fourth and ninety-second thoughts. Fleeing for Your Life suddenly sounds terrifying, especially surrounded by open country. For the last hour there's been nothing but fields. Where are all the buildings? The people? The cars? Where the hell do you hide out here?

With a pang I think of my grandmother's home, the one she left to me. The one my parents have ravaged with their neglect over the last twenty years. I could cry when I think of the sagging roof, the broken windows and the unkempt garden, and that's just the outside. God only knows what it's like inside. I swallow a hard lump. I have to do this. I can do this. I have to restore the sad house. It symbolises the family life I experienced when my grandmother was alive, the normality and order that came with living with her. Once she died, all that disappeared. That house is so much more than a mere building to me.

I'm not going to give up at the first puny hurdle, which is that I can barely lift my suitcase down onto the platform. I shove, push and pull the outsize case, trying to get it out of the door, and when I look up for help, I see Tom bloody Dereborn is disembarking from the next carriage and watching me, his lip curling, his disdain obvious. Then, to my utter surprise, he strides over and takes it from me, lifting it and lowering it to the platform with a quick grunt.

‘What the fuck have you got in there?' he says.

‘What are you doing here?' I ask, horrified by the quick punch of excitement my body produces at the sight of him.

‘Same as you, I'd imagine.'

He dumps my case on the ground and turns his back on me to pick up his own fancy rucksack, navy blue with dozens of straps and plastic catches in co-ordinating orange. It's a proper boys' adventure piece of kit with orange mesh pockets of varying sizes, packed with bottles of water, bananas, a book and his mobile phone.

It doesn't bother me. At school I was always the poor relation, woefully ill-equipped. Not anymore. My case might be huge, but I can guarantee I'm prepared for every eventuality.

The tiny train station is the gateway to the Lake District, where, according to the paperwork, we're being picked up and taken to ‘base'. The word brings to mind military-style tents and men in combat gear. Said paperwork has been sketchy about the exact details of the next two days and what is involved as they're ‘subject to change', though it had included a detailed waiver and a release form, and a loose two-day itinerary. Today we'll meet everyone during an orientation session and tomorrow there will a day's team-building audition process to assess our suitability for the programme. I'd really like to have known more to prepare a little. I have a lot riding on this.

I sneak a look at Tom's stern profile. Christ, just imagine if the production company knew we'd slept together and hadn't seen each other until last week. It would increase our chances of being picked to take part as it would make good telly. But I can't let them know. It was humiliating enough that we slept together and then the bastard couldn't wait to get rid of me afterwards.

I can remember it so clearly. As the sun started to go down on Sunday and the evening drew in, it was as if he morphed into another person. One minute he was kissing my shoulder and then the next, he was hustling me out of his apartment like his pants were on fire, and his parents were due home any second – except I'm pretty damn sure it was his place given the all-grey, tasteful and blatantly single-guy decor. I can't decide whether I'm still mad as hell with him because of the way he pulled the plug on that weekend or because he pretended he didn't know me.

I've gone over a gazillion times what I might have said to trigger it that Sunday evening – that portcullis coming down, the warmth fizzing out of those blue eyes turning them steely grey. I saw it again when we were on site in Spain.

I met Tom Dereborn … I can't bring myself to call him Tom because while my body might know his intimately, having been expertly filled, fucked every which way by his, until the other day I never knew his full name.

Exactly eleven months ago, one Friday evening, he sat down next to me at one of those interminable industry conference dinners. From the moment his shoulder brushed mine, firing up an electric frisson-fuelled awareness, I was conscious of his every move. Even the low-pitched timbre of his voice, gravelly and smoke-filled, set off a crazy flash of lust curling and twisting through me. We barely spoke, both of us intentionally concentrating on our other neighbours as if determined to ignore the Northern Lights flare of energy dancing between us. Halfway through the main course – could have been chicken – I bent to pick up the napkin that had slipped off my lap and he bent at the same moment to gather it for me. His hand touched mine and for some stupid reason, my breath caught in my throat as I looked into his deep blue eyes.

‘Do you want to get out of here?' he asked.

Without so much as a blink of hesitation, I nodded.

‘Meet you in the foyer in five,' he murmured out of the corner of his mouth and got up from the table.

I remember slugging back the wine in my glass, picking up my clutch bag and forcing myself to watch the second hand of the big grand clock above the ballroom of The Dorchester until exactly five minutes had passed. I half expected to find that he'd gone.

Shamelessly and without a second thought I followed him into the cab the concierge had called up for us. Our mouths fused the minute the door closed. I never felt such desperation to get so close to someone. It was as if a jar of fireflies had been emptied into my brain, dazzling me with sparks. Every long, slow, drugging drag of his lips over mine made them brighten, and when his tongue touched mine, they exploded, sending cascading vibrations fizzing down through my sternum.

I suspect when it came round to Sunday evening, he regretted the whole weekend.

Accepting that is like a tiny stab wound, small on the outside but it goes deep. I was good enough to fuck senseless, but nothing else. It makes me mad at him all over again as well as reinforcing that awareness that I've always carried with me that I'm somehow lacking in some way. I'm good at my job, I have friends, people like me, but there is something intrinsic, a basic essential bit of me that is wrong in some way. Over the years I thought I'd got used to it, but his rejection of me after the intimacies we shared has scored deeply.

Sometimes I wonder if I imagined the connection between us. I've replayed that weekend so many times in my head, but I'm a realist, not given to flights of fantasy and I know it was there. I didn't imagine it. Tom chose to reject it, but it was there.

Pride stops me bringing the subject up. Fuck him.

I stagger a little with the weight of my case and almost bump into him as I try to keep up with him.

‘Kitchen sink?' he asks raising a supercilious eyebrow.

‘Look, why don't we call a truce?' I suggest. I'm not built for conflict. I like to fly under the radar, which is what I've tried to do for most of my life.

‘A truce would suggest we've fallen out,' he says.

I frown, completely disconcerted by this statement.

‘I disagreed with your approach in Barcelona but I'm adult enough to accept that colleagues will have differing opinions.'

I gape at him because I am truly flabbergasted, gabberflasted and dabbergaffled.

Before I can shout, ‘What about the sex?' an exceptionally tall man, with shoulders so wide he must have to turn sideways to walk through doorways, approaches us.

‘Lydia Smith, Tom Dereborn?'

Still simmering, I leave Tom to say yes.

‘I'm Mark, one of the team. Welcome. Car's out front.'

The man-giant takes my case without so much as flinching at the weight and leads us to an eye-wateringly bright orange Land Rover in the car park.

‘Welcome to the Jaffamobile,' says Mark when he catches me examining the colour.

‘It's bright.'

‘Yup. Can't lose us.'

I am pleasantly surprised when Tom asks if I'd like to go in the front, so surprised that I say yes and climb up. Most men assume that the front seat is for them.

‘It's a half hour's drive to get to Mannderdale, where we're headed. It's a management training college and will be our HQ. I suggest you lean back and enjoy the scenery.' He flashes a grin before adding, ‘It's probably the only chance you'll get.'

Apprehension skitters across the base of my belly. I've tried hard not to think about what the next five days hold. I'm not really an outdoorsy person, not by design or choice, just because I never had the opportunity. It's outside my experience, so I have no idea whether I'll be good or bad at it. Looking at Tom's walking trousers and Granite Gear rucksack (I'm betting it's a good brand), I can confidently predict that he was probably a Boy Scout or did a Duke of Edinburgh award.

Dry stone walls, neat and precise, line the road. We're not in London anymore. There seems to be an inordinate number of coaches cruising at snail's pace along the narrow roads and we're soon stuck behind one.

Mark, however, is patient as we trundle along. ‘Local hazard. Coach trips.' I turn away from the view of the wheezing coach exhaust as we meander along and instead look at the green fields dotted with grubby sheep, heads glued to the grass, which abound in every direction. I'd expected something a bit more dramatic, so I'm relieved we've been driving through soft and gentle scenery. I had visions of hiking up mountains.

‘Lake Windermere,' says Mark, a man of few words, pointing through the trees to the flat water we catch glimpses of along the drive; it looks peaceful and serene. It's the tail end of summer, early September, and the trees are still full-leaved and green.

Traffic is heavy until we turn off the main road, gradually climbing. The landscape starts to change, fewer trees, and the green is replaced by the burnt bracken and tussocky grass. Suddenly we crest the hill and I gasp. The view is magnificent and, with a visceral punch to the heart, I get what all those ‘wander lonely as a cloud' poets and painters had been banging on about. Mountains in faded purples range along the horizon. The hillside falls away in front of us, another lake glistening in the distance, the road a vee between hills winding down.

‘Never gets old,' says Mark, looking over at me.

I smile at him although my brain is screaming, ‘Eyes on the road, eyes on the road.' ‘No. I imagine not.' They are big hills. Mountains. Did I know there were mountains in England? I hope we're not going to be hiking up them. Suddenly five days on the loose seems quite a long time. They're not expecting us to walk to London, are they?

I shrink back into my seat trying to fight that familiar I'm-out-of-place feeling, which most of the time I'm able to keep on top of.

* * *

Mannerdale Hall looks like a stately home, nestled in the valley surrounded by trees, with verdant gardens swooping down a gentle swell to the shores of a lake. There's a jetty down there, around which kayaks and floats are tied up. My stomach drops. Why hadn't it occurred to me that there might be water-based activities? The Lake District might have been a clue.

‘Here we are. I'll drop you at the front. Someone'll meet you and show you your rooms. You'll be sharing.'

Tom and both look at each other, startled horror etched large.

Mark guffaws. ‘Not with each other. Don't worry, it's not that sort of programme.'

He's still chuckling away to himself as we traipse through the porch into the hall where we're greeted by another rugged-looking bloke. Once he's checked our names on his clipboard, he leads us towards a grand staircase that has seen better days. No lift then. There's no offer to carry my case, which is absolutely fine by me. I'm quite happy to do it and quite capable – as long as it's at my own pace. The two men lope ahead exchanging small talk.

I tune out because I need all my effort to lift, grunt, move forward and not fall. The steps are wide and shallow, which means there are a lot of the buggers.

‘Here, let me.' Tom appears at my side, nudges me out of the way and picks up my case. ‘Otherwise we'll be here all night. How many pairs of shoes have you got in here?' he asks, and before I can roll my eyes at the unnecessary girly pigeonholing, he adds, ‘Please don't tell me you have more than one pair of those hobnail boots of yours.'

Is he actually making a joke?

‘Well,' I tilt my head, ‘there's the green pair, the blue pair and of course I have purple. You have to co-ordinate, you know.'

His laugh is a short, sharp bark. ‘I knew I shouldn't have asked.'

‘I like to be prepared.'

We reach the top of the stairs and I'm shown into my room first.

‘Here you go' is all the rugged bloke says before he turns and leads Tom further down the corridor.

I walk into a beautiful bright room with three windows looking out over the lake. There are two single beds in the room, with white functional duvets. At the end of one there's a suitcase, which if anything is marginally bigger than mine.

‘Hey Roomie!' A woman pops out of the bathroom. She takes one look at my suitcase and beams.

I beam back because she has one of those lovely open sunny faces that are impossible not to like.

‘I'm Tansy.' She holds up her hand. ‘And before you say anything, I know, I've heard it all before. Shit name but I didn't choose it. Apparently, it's a plant and also a really pretty beetle. Not sure my folks knew the latter.'

I want to laugh. She doesn't know how lucky she is.

My parents, buoyed up by my arrival, downed not one but two bottles of champagne. Consequently, on their visit to register my birth they had settled up on Taittinger as a suitable name but, at the last minute, decided it would be utterly hilarious to name me … Chlamydia. I have since discovered that registrars are prevented by law from making any comment on names. That's one law I'd campaign to change.

Of course I don't ever reveal this, so I say, as I always do to any new acquaintance, ‘Hi, I'm Lydia. Lydie to my friends.'

‘See, why didn't my parents give me a nice name like that? Honestly, you'd think I was some hippy child that grew up on organic home-made yoghurt and quinoa. My parents are Mr and Mrs So Normal.' She shakes her head and grins. ‘You travel light too.'

I grin back at her. ‘Not particularly.'

‘Fancy a GT?' She opens her case and produces a bottle of gin and a six-pack of Fever Tree tonics. ‘I think we might need something to get us through this. My flatmate blackmailed me into signing up; she's on the production team. If they didn't get enough bodies on board, she was out of a job. Given she pays half my mortgage, it was a no-brainer. Besides, you got to be in it to win it. Ten grand for showing up will do nicely. And a shot at a hundred grand doesn't fall in your lap every day. How did you get conned?'

‘The short story is that I inherited my gran's house and it's been trashed by … by squatters. I want to use the money to restore it.'

‘That sucks. Hope you get through.' She laughs. ‘If I win, my flatmate is dust. I'm going to pay off her half of the mortgage so I don't have to share with her anymore.'

While Tansy liberated a couple of tooth mugs from the bathroom, I unpacked essentials from my suitcase, careful not to expose too much of the contents.

‘I have snacks,' I say, producing two packets of crisps.

She doesn't need to know there are another two packets in my case. I'm the human equivalent of a squirrel, saving now in case of lean times. It's a compulsion that I've had since I was a kid. My friends Eleanor and Olivia still tease me about the full carton of canned beans under my bed at university. But when you live in chaos, you try to bring order and prepare for any eventuality.

Why else would I have brought a dozen condoms, two packets of digestive biscuits, a pack of disposable razors, hairdressing and nail scissors, two sachets of CupaSoup, six packets of instant pasta, a full pack of Tampax even though I'm not due for another three weeks, a sewing kit, umpteen sachets of coffee, three travel bars of soap, a roll of Sellotape and various other items that I might need?

In addition I'd bought a couple of things specifically for the trip, like a waterproof and woolly hat, as we'd been sent a suggested kit list for the course. We'd also been advised that any specialist items would be supplied but I like to be over-prepared. Always.

‘Here you go, chin, chin,' said Tansy handing me a mug.

‘Cheers,' I reply, chinking my mug against hers.

With a companion like Tansy, things are already looking up.